At Week's End

October 20, 1990

Capsules of commentary on recent events in the news:

COLORS FOR VIRGINIA

It is no coincidence that the campaign colors adopted by David Olson, the Republican candidate for commonwealth's attorney in Newport News, are the same as those used by 1st District Rep. Herbert Bateman, seeking re-election to a fifth term in Congress. Bateman, a Republican, traditionally has put orange letters on a blue background on his campaign billboards.

Olson, running for the first time for public office, is using blue letters on an orange background on his signs. Hence, when the voters see patches of orange and blue along the roadways of Newport News, they are supposed to think of Bateman and Olson. Theirs is supposed to be a subliminal message.

But Bateman and Olson are far from being subtle. These two graduates of The College of William and Mary know full well that these days, when most people see orange and blue, they think not of them but of the University of Virginia and the Cavaliers' No. 1 ranked football team.

READING FOR PLEASURE

Lt. Gov. Don Beyer is a voracious reader. Whenever he gets a free moment, he reads. He carries books with him when he travels, and leaves the driving of his Volvo to someone else so he can get more reading done. He generally has two or three books "going" most of the time.

Earlier this week, Beyer was in Newport News, and so what was he reading? Well, he was midway through a classic of American politics, "All the King's Men," Robert Penn Warren's Pulitizer-Prize winning novel of Willie Stark, governor of a state very much like Louisiana, and he had just started "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters," a humorous retelling of history by Julian Barnes.

And what should we conclude from Beyer's current reading? Is there a message here? Why, for heaven's sake, would the lieutenant governor of Virginia want to know about how not to govern a state or how others got their names in a book of fictitious history?

No - there's no plan to Beyer's reading. Next week he'll be in the middle of a couple of other books that randomly take his fancy.

SHARING THE RISKS

Some of the United States' most popular exports take the form of pop and rock music, soap operas and movies. American food, particularly fast food, is just as popular. The upshot of all of that grease, fat and cholesterol is heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol and obesity. The American fast food diet has now taken its toll on the Japanese, who are suffering from the very diet-related ailments health-conscious Americans are trying to overcome.

Maybe it's time for everyone to give up the fast chicken, tacos, hamburgers and pizza and opt for the now forsaken but traditional and healthy Japanese diet of fish, rice and vegetables.

NO AUTOMATIC PILOTS

In an era in which minor league baseball is booming across the country, the Peninsula team continues to struggle off the field. Since Jay Acton purchased the club in November 1988, it has had four men in the post of general manager - the person who operates the team's daily business affairs. Three of them were on the job less than three months, the latest being Michael Holmes, who quit after only three days.

The lack of continuity has to hamper the team's efforts to sustain financial support from the community, with each new general manager needing time to get to know the area. The Pilots have no guarantee of support from the major leagues beyond 1991, and Acton wants $600,000 in repairs made to War Memorial Stadium. It is hard to be optimistic about the future of the team.

A CLOUDY SITUATION

Virginia ought to recognize massive resistance when it sees it, having been a key outpost in the effort to circumvent desegregation of schools in the 1950s and '60s. Thirty years later, another kind of massive resistance lives on in the tobacco industry's persistent foot-dragging on the hazards of cigarette smoking.

It was reported this week that the Tobacco Institute had succeeded in having a scientist removed from a federal panel on second-hand cigarette smoke. Unable to mend its ways, the industry instead resorts to savoring every day that passes without a new report on what cigarette smoking does to human health.

NONE OF THE ABOVE

Pessimism about government is at an all-time high. Surprise, surprise. A survey by Gallup pollsters last week found that Americans are generally fed up with the way government has been operating. Only 29 percent of Americans are satisfied with government as it is.

That's not good news for either Democratic or Republican incumbents facing re-election in three weeks. The Gallup poll results, along with moves across the country to limit congressional terms and proposals to vote for "none of the above," spell trouble for career politicians. Working against all of those incumbents is a lagging economy, the inability to balance a budget and the threat of war.